There's a reason Wayne Graham and his Rice baseball team has secured 21 straight trips to the NCAA Tournament with seven College World Series appearances and a national championship in 2003.

Graham, who at 80 is old enough to serve as the grandfather for his players, stockpiles pitchers and relies on defense. It's hard to argue with a recipe that has produced more than 1,000 wins during his career.

Rice makes teams beat them. Or as Louisiana Tech coach Greg Goff put it, the Owls are like that ping pong player who just plays defense. That style of play has resulted in a 35-3 series advantage over Louisiana Tech with Rice winning 17 straight and the last Bulldog victory coming in 2005.

"Not that offensive guy that is swinging and trying to score. They just return your serves and wait for you to mess up," he joked.

It's an accurate summary and one that Tech will try and break through against during this weekend's three-game series in Ruston, the final and easily the most important of the 2016 season for the Bulldogs. First pitch Thursday and Friday is at 6 p.m. The series finale Saturday is at 1 p.m.

A series win for Tech (34-16, 16-11 Conference USA) over No. 16 Rice (32-16, 19-7) would drastically increase the Bulldogs' chances at an at-large NCAA Tournament berth, which would be the program's first since 1987.

Rice leads the conference in ERA (2.91) and is fourth in fielding percentage. The pitching numbers are easily far and away the best in the league despite a football-like 24-6 loss to Houston on Tuesday in which the Owls' reserve pitching staff was crushed like batting practice.

Nonetheless, the hurlers Tech will see this weekend are some of the top pitchers in the country.

Friday starter Jon Duplantier is 7-4 with a 2.14 ERA and 118 strikeouts in 92 ⅔ innings pitched. Blake Fox, Rice's Saturday starter, is just 4-7 but holds a 2.70 ERA, and closer Glenn Otto has eight saves with a 1.87 ERA.

"Their Friday and Saturday guys are top guys who will be in the draft," Tech second baseman Jordan Washam said. "(Hitting coach Jake) Wells does a really good job of having a plan every game. We have to stick to our plan and it will pay off for us. Sometimes we get away from the plan but we have to stick with it."

Tech's top pitchers have numbers that aren't too far off. Normal Sunday start Casey Sutton leads the league among qualified pitchers in ERA at 1.47 and closer Adam Atkins is 5-0 with a 0.87 ERA and nine saves.

Sutton will move up to game two of the series with Braden Bristo expected to get the nod Saturday. Left-hander Phillip Diehl will assume his normal status as Tech's game one starter Thursday.

Diehl has stepped up in place of ace Tyler Clancy, who hasn't pitched in six weeks due to an arm injury. Clancy threw a bullpen session earlier this week and could throw a few innings of relief this weekend.

Tech is willing to pull out all the stops for a win.

"Are you confident enough? Do you feel like you've worked hard enough? Do you feel you've paid that big enough price to beat those guys?" Goff said. "I think our players are beyond the fact that it has Rice on the jersey. Hopefully we've trained them enough and made them tough enough to realize we've worked as hard or harder. We have paid the price and now it's time to go out there and execute on the field."

Rice is known for 1-0 or 2-1 wins, but the Owls can still produce some pop. They beat Florida Atlantic last weekend, 9-1, and put up 12 runs earlier this month against Florida International.

But Tech knows it needs to win at the plate. The Bulldogs rank in the top five in C-USA in 15 different offensive categories and lead the league in triples and stolen bases.

With a bullpen full of hard throwers who use sliders to keep hitters off balance, Tech's Marshall Boggs said the Bulldogs will need to find any means necessary to get on base, whether that's hit by pitch, walk or even errors.

"If we get complacent and nervous and caught up in the hype and try to do too much I think we're going to be walking out of here with getting swept," he said. "But if we play baseball the way we've been doing all year and not trying to do anything we're not capable of doing we should do pretty good this weekend."

Boggs said he feels Rice may "underestimate us a little bit," but Tech's ability to fly under the radar might have ended when it won 15 of 17 games and five straight conference series.

Third baseman Chase Lunceford even went as far to call the series "do or die" considering what's at stake, but he also said Tech can't make the weekend bigger than it needs to be.

"This weekend is huge but we can't look at it that way. It's just another weekend playing baseball and doing what we love," he said. "Coach Wells tells us to look through our opponents and not look around them. Rice is Rice. Their name is big, but we can't get caught up in all that."